The Schumer Shutdown rolled the dice.
The Dems went into this expecting a big win in the midterm elections. They could have played it safe. Instead they decided to double down by shutting down the government to legalize Obama's DACA illegal aliens. But a CNN poll, which is otherwise extremely unfavorable to Republicans and Trump, suggests that most of the public does not support Schumer's DACA government shutdown.
A majority of Americans, 56%, said approving a budget to avoid a government shutdown was more important for Congress to do than passing a bill to maintain the DACA program. Only one in three Americans, 34%, said they prioritized a DACA fix over avoiding a shutdown.
The preference for avoiding a shutdown holds across most demographic groups, even those that are traditionally Democratic-leaning. Among young people, it's 50% avoid a shutdown to 42% maintain DACA. Racial and ethnic minorities preferred avoiding a shutdown by 51% to 39%. Women favored keeping the government open by 10 points, 49% to 39%.
The Dems already saw these numbers. It's why they're beginning to fold on the border wall.
Among the group of Americans who say they both oppose building a wall and want to find a DACA solution -- more than half of the country -- a broad 8 in 10 said that continuing the DACA program is more important to them then blocking construction of a border wall. Only 1 in 6 said opposing the border wall is more important than continuing DACA.
And even among Dems, the Schumer Shutdown doesn't poll well.
Not quite half of Democrats -- 49% -- said they think that finding a solution for the roughly 690,000 undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children is a higher priority than keeping the government open. A significant minority, 42%, said they think it's more important to avoid the first government shutdown since 2013.
That's not a very wide margin, and it held up only among liberal Democrats (57% picked DACA, 35% a budget agreement). Among Democrats who say they are ideologically moderate or conservative, 51% said approving a budget agreement is more important, while 40% choose DACA.
The shutdown panders to the radical base that's driving the Dem agenda, but it's unpopular with saner Dems and the country in general.
Schumer and the Dems gambled on the media carrying their water. And that's why the numbers are generally skewed against Republicans. But once the issue is clear, support for the Schumer Shutdown collapses.